Don’t put me in a box: Leigh Bowery! at Tate Modern
Sequins, lace, colour, music and disco balls, this exhibition is an ode to Bowery’s celebration of life...
By
Rhea Mathur
March 4, 2025
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
In his short but spectacular life, Leigh Bowery was everything from an artist and a musician to a fashion designer and TV personality. Tate Modern’s new eponymous exhibition, on view till 31 August 2025, takes us through his extraordinary achievements, giving us a glimpse into the world he was trying to create. Complete with music, colour and disco balls, Leigh Bowery! looks into how the artist brought art to life, treating himself as a living, breathing installation, pushing all boundaries to create something truly unique. Attesting to this idea is nightlife and photojournalist Alex Gerry, who met the artist as a club kid and said, “Performing with dancer and choreographer Michael Clark and posing nude for Lucian Freud took pride of place on Leigh’s CV. However, his true calling was to appear whenever he was out as an ever-changing, outlandish, living art piece. Needless to say, he found his ideal arena in London’s clubland.”
The exhibition begins by focusing on a 1980s Bowery, who had just moved from Melbourne to London and was starting his career as a fashion designer. The room features a Star Trek wallpaper that Bowery was known to have in his living room in his Stepney Green council housing, where he lived until he passed in 1994. It showcases clothes designed by him between 1933 and 1934, reminiscent of the times when everything was made from muted colours and with a frayed edge.
In 1985-86, Sue Tilly painted a portrait of Bowery on a wooden panel using acrylics. She painted him with grey hair, well-defined eyebrows, and pink polka dots all over his face and clothes. Tilly was one of Bowery’s close friends, and after she finished the work, she showed it to him. Bowery then added spools of threads in multiple different colours and thicknesses to the work, symbolising the intrinsic relationship between fashion and his identity.
The many rooms of this exhibition contain many mannequins in lace, sequins, and polka dots from head to toe, and the second room is designed to depict Bowery’s joie de vivre. The room is titled Club: Would you let yourself in?, fashioning some of Bowery’s most incredible outfits, along with a montage of his memories, representing the life and blood of the 80s club culture. This was also a transitional moment for the internationally renowned star, who decided to focus more on styling himself and less on fashion as a business venture. Bowery lived for the unpredictable. Fashion was his passion, it was his life; he was a performer and nightclubs in London were his catwalk.
Halfway through the exhibition, the curators move their focus from fashion and dressing to undressing by placing on an elevated platform - his dresses, his wig, his padded bra, his merkin, all placed under photographs of his belongings lying on the sidewalks. This installation discusses Bowery’s use of fashion to subvert convention in the everyday. By shocking people on the streets with his style, he pushed them to re-evaluate their submission to conformity. The exhibition later also plays the song ‘Useless Man’ by Bowery’s band Minty, formed with ex-designer Richard Torry, which, in its essence, questions why gay culture is seen as ‘useless’ to society.
The most beautiful part of this exhibition is that anyone who enters with self-doubt leaves without it. Watching Bowery move through the phases of his life—pushing boundaries, his body, and his mind—he is fixated on living larger, growing, learning, and creating. The boundless, magical chaos that surrounded him is captured in this exhibition. The focus is on embracing life, rejecting conformity, and questioning ideas of sexuality and gender.
What comes next is an explosion of transgressions, where posing nude for Lucian Freud and making himself physically uncomfortable is only the tip of the iceberg. Bowery’s resistance towards any label kept him constantly experimenting with ways to excite, amuse, and digest people; he simply welcomed a reaction. In one of the last few rooms of this exhibition is a black and white photograph taken by Gordon Rainsford in 1990, where Bowery is seen bent over, wearing nothing but sequins and glitter, spraying water from his anus on the front row of the Fridge. Performing at the club in Brixton at an AIDS benefit, The Heart is in the Right Place; Bowery worries that perhaps he took it too far that night. It is a photograph among many that tries to capture Bowery. But alas, to capture him completely would mean stifling the artist. So, in the end, the audience sees the glamorous, bejewelled life of the performer and is reminded to break free from the boxes we often place ourselves in.
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